All In Good Time
by DuchessConlon
Summary: Three high school girls go back to 1899. Two of them have never even heard of Newsies. How will they survive?! Not your usual time travel fic I hope. So R&R!
1. Default Chapter

AN: Welcome to my time travel fic! I have tried to take a different approach to the idea, so I hope you like it. As usual, Newsies belongs to Disney. I also don't own Sketchers, and even though I barely mention them I have to say that. As to characters, Mandy is mine. Heddy belongs to Rae Kelly. And Hades belongs to herself of course. You all know Hades! And if you don't, well lucky you. Just kidding Hades! *ducks bricks flying her direction* All other non-newsie characters belong to me. Now on with the show!  
  
****  
  
The crash, accompanied by a scream, echoed from the stairwell. "Heddy!" a petite girl, with curly strawberry blonde hair bounded down the stairs to where her friend was lying in a heap at the bottom. "Are you all right?" she demanded.  
  
"I'm fine, Mandy. Just help me up, ok?" Mandy nodded and helped Heddy to her feet. Once standing, Heddy was quite a bit taller than her friend, with long straight light brown hair and dark green eyes.  
  
Just as Heddy made it to her feet, a gorgeous blonde in a cheerleading outfit walked past, trailed by her sheep-like followers. The girl shot a disdainful look at Heddy. "Destructo girl's at it again," she muttered snidely to the girl beside her. Heddy blushed and looked down at her feet. Mandy on the other hand stepped directly into the girl's path. She glared up at the blonde, her normally sparkling light green eyes as hard and cold as jade.  
  
"Heddy is worth ten of you, Marissa Peters! So why don't you and sheep just go shove it?"  
  
Marissa was taken aback for a moment, then her eyes narrowed. "You'll pay for that Mandy Parker. Just wait!" Then she stormed off, sheep in tow. As soon as she was out of sight, Mandy leaned back against the stair railing, her hands over her face.  
  
"I am so dead!" she moaned, her voice muffled by her hands. Heddy placed a comforting hand on her shoulder.  
  
"Thanks," she said softly. Mandy lowered her hands and grinned sheepishly. "Come on, we've got to get to homeroom."  
  
The girls slid into their seats just seconds before the bell. As their teacher, Miss Patterson, called roll, they attempted to catch their breath without drawing attention to themselves.  
  
"Heddy Lewis?"  
  
"Here."  
  
As Miss Patterson checked off her name, Principal Carter came into the classroom, followed by a very strangely attired girl. "Miss Patterson, I have a new student for your class," he said, motioning the girl forward. "This is Carrie Mason."  
  
Carrie's long brown hair was covered by an old fashioned looking cap. She was wearing a blue button down shirt partly open over a grey tank top, capris jeans, and Sketchers boots. She stared boldly out at the class with her dark eyes, seemingly daring anyone to comment. As soon as Principal Carter left the room, she turned to Miss Patterson.  
  
"The name's Hades. No one calls me Carrie." The teacher raised her eyebrows slightly.  
  
"Okay. Well . . . Hades, why don't you sit beside Miss Parker?" she said, indicating the seat on Mandy's left.  
  
A little while later, the bell rang, and the students headed to their lockers. Mandy and Heddy decided to take a shot at befriending the strange girl. They hurried to catch up with her, since she'd gotten a bit ahead of them in the heavy hallway traffic. When they made it to her side, Mandy tapped her on the shoulder.  
  
"Hi! I'm Mandy and this is Heddy." Hades just stared at them.  
  
"Yeah . . ."  
  
"Well, um . . . do you need help finding your locker or something? This school can be kinda confusing till you find your way around."  
  
She looked at Mandy critically for a moment and seemed to make some kind of decision. "Thanks," she said, and smiled, dropping her cold, suspicious demeanor, "It's number 304."  
  
"That's right next to ours!" Heddy said, "Come on, we'll show you." The three girls walked off making friendly small talk. When they reached their lockers they were talking about movies. "So," Hades said, "Have you guys every seen Newsies?"  
  
"Seen what?" Heddy asked.  
  
"Newsies."  
  
Mandy and Heddy shook their heads.  
  
"Too bad, it's great. Maybe you two could come over to my place sometime and watch it sometime."  
  
"Sound fun," Mandy said, smiling. "So what do you have next?"  
  
Hades consulted her schedule. "Biology."  
  
"Oh, that's right down the hall. We've got English." Mandy pointed Hades in the right direction, then she and Heddy headed off to English.  
  
****  
  
About a week later, Heddy, Mandy, and Hades were spending Study Hall in the computer lab. Heddy was working on a paper, while Mandy was goofing off and saving her paper writing for the last minute as usual. Hades was working on some immensely complicated computer program that she wouldn't tell them anything about. They had been working, or not working, for about twenty minutes when Hades suddenly jumped out of her chair. "I think I've got it!" she cried.  
  
"Got what?" asked Mandy mystified. Hades didn't seem to hear her. "Now just to test it," she mumbled, quickly sitting back down and typing hastily. After a moment she finished whatever she was doing. "That should be it . . ." She his the enter key.  
  
Suddenly the world turned upside down and the computer lab seemed to fade out. Then the world went black. 


	2. WHAT?!

Thanks to Rae, Singah, Moth, Lysaka, Taurus Princess, and Hades for reviewing. Everyone else who didn't review . . . I call down the wrath of Spot on you! And that ain't pretty. Just kidding guys, but you know I love reviews!  
  
****  
  
Mandy moaned as she came to and realized she was lying on hard pavement. "What the . . ." she murmured, pushing herself to a sitting position. Looking around, she realized she was no longer in the computer lab. In fact she wasn't in school, and wherever she was didn't look much like her town either. Directly in front of her was a large statue of a man sitting in a chair. The plaque on the bottom read, "Horace Greeley, Publisher and Journalist, 'Go west young man,' 1811-1872." Said statue was at the center of some sort of square.  
  
The roads outside the small fenced enclosure around the statue were cobblestone, and around the outside of the square were various shops and offices. The people walking around the area were dressed in turn of the century garb, and not the turn of the twenty first century either. The women wore ankle length skirts and high necked blouses, which obviously covered corsets and petticoats. They all wore dainty feminine hats or carried lacy parasols, both of which accessories appeared to be more decorative than utilitarian. The men wore three piece suits in uncomfortable looking wool and tweed. They also wore old-fashioned caps much like the one Hades sported everyday at school, or bowler hats.  
  
As near as Mandy could figure this was some kind of historical district, but how she'd gotten there, she had no idea. The last thing she remembered was Hades in the computer lab . . . Hades! Where was she? And what about Heddy? Mandy quickly pulled her eyes from the outside of the square and surveyed the small fenced in area where she sat. To her relief, Heddy and Hades were on either side of her, just beginning to stir. Hades came to first, looking confused for a moment, then sitting bolt upright. She jumped quickly to her feet and looked around, seeming to absorb everything in an instant. "I don't believe it," she said it softly at first, then squealed in pure joy, "I DON'T BELIEVE IT! It worked! It actually worked!"  
  
"What worked?" Mandy looked to her left and saw that Heddy had come to and was looking at Hades in consternation.  
  
"My time machine!" she looked at Heddy as though this should be obvious. "Well, time travel program actually, but same idea. I brought us back in time to August 1899, just a month after the strike."  
  
"You WHAT?!" Mandy was livid, not to mention a bit skeptical. "Look Hades, I don't know what you did, but time travel is impossible. So whatever it is you just undo it right now and take us back to study hall."  
  
"Time travel is not impossible, merely improbable. The program was really based on the simple concept of probability. The odds of traveling through time unaided are extremely low, and adding the factor of where and when makes them practically microscopic. So I wrote a code that eliminated the chance factor."  
  
Heddy and Mandy looked at her mystified. "Huh?"  
  
Hades shook her head. "I wrote a computer program that works like a time machine."  
  
"Oh. Sure you did," Mandy said sarcastically.  
  
"Yes, I did," said Hades in a dead serious voice, "And as to undoing it. I can't. I didn't write a return factor into the program."  
  
"WHAT?!" Heddy and Mandy yelled in unison.  
  
"Well why would I? I don't wanna go back there." Hades shrugged as if this were no big deal.  
  
Mandy was furious, not to mention seriously freaked out. "Hades," she began in a dangerously friendly voice, "Did it occur to you that Isome/I of us might not have Iwanted/I an all expenses paid, one way trip to 1899?"  
  
Hades was just about to answer, when a loud commotion was heard on the opposite side of the square. The three girls looked over to see a couple dozen boys ranging in age from about seven to late teens. At the head of the group was a tall guy wearing a cowboy hat and red bandanna. Hades' eyes widened in awe. "It's them," she breathed.  
  
****  
  
AN: Well, a bit short, but you liked it. You know you did! So review and tell me so, lol. Now seriously, I have a sort of vague idea of where I want this story to go eventually, but only very vague, so any ideas, suggestions, etc. would be really helpful :-) giving you further reason to review . . . I have such a one track mind! 


End file.
